If he follows through on this, it could mark one of the great achievements of his tenure. New Jersey’s hawkish approach to the drug war has been an expensive disaster that has left nothing but ruined lives in its wake.

“Putting people in prison for nonviolent drug offenses makes no sense,” the governor said last week.

Why they’re incarcerated: Inmates in New Jersey correctional institutions by base offense — the most serious offense at the time of admission

That conclusion is inescapable. Treatment is much cheaper than prison and far more likely to turn addicts into productive citizens. That helps reduce crime and keep families together.

New Jersey spends roughly $1 billion a year on its prisons, where one in four inmates is a nonviolent drug offender. Almost half of the drug offenders land back in prison within three years.

And that should come as no surprise. Most of them have drug habits that are not addressed. They are more likely to have mental health problems, limited education and spotty job histories.

When they are released from prison, nearly half of them have no supervision whatsoever. They are banned from a long list of professions. And many of them face debts for child support that went unpaid during their prison terms.

This creates a cycle of doom for the offenders, their families and their neighborhoods. Prison is followed by more crime, and then more prison. Everyone loses, including the taxpayer.

The governor wants a fresh start on all this. He has established a task force and charged it with finding ways to divert drug offenders into treatment and to prepare them for the transition home.

His most specific order was to expand the drug court program, which now supervises about 1,400 drug offenders who applied to get in. The governor wants to make that mandatory for some offenders, at least in a pilot program.

The big question now is whether he will devote the needed political muscle and money to back up this rhetorical shift. This approach will save money in the long run, but first will require a much larger investment in drug treatment, and in education and training of offenders. The state’s harsh drug laws will have to change, too.

New Jersey has been inching in this direction for years, thanks to people such as Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union). Our hope is that the governor pulls out the stops on this and makes the change dramatic.